Let’s get the un-fun stuff out of the way first. Self-hosting has some risks and responsibilities associated with it. When all of your data and apps are under your control, nobody will make sure your data is backed up. Nobody is going to jump in when your RocketChat instance goes down. Choosing to not think about what can go wrong is a choice you will regret later, usually in the form of losing something you’ve spent weeks working on.

Given the extra work involved, why would anyone do it?

There is definitely a group of technically-minded people that do it just because they find it fun. Doesn’t have to be your hobby, but they like it, and so they do it. They probably don’t have much to gain by reading this post, but you, my dear reader, can learn things from them, so long as you’re polite, respectful, willing to ask questions, and willing to go down a couple googling & reading rabbit holes. In the “techy” corners of the internet, you can find these folks hanging out in the “homelab” communities, along with other learners.

Others do it because they want control over their data. While computers and the internet tend to copy nearly every bit of data a ridiculous number of times, there are ways to make sure you know where that data is and isn’t. What leads to wanting control? Often times, it’s privacy concerns. Sometimes it’s getting the features you need.

Others might do it for political reasons. Whether it’s disliking a specific company in general, wanting to avoid a given company earning revenue from yourself, or how to correctly manage power structures, self-hosting gives tech-minded consumers a veto power over large tech companies. Boycotting a company on your own does nothing, but if everyone boycotts the same company, it often can cause changes. The people in this camp are self-hosting stuff to protest Google and/or Microsoft. It’s not a perfect solution, and there are limits to what one individual can accomplish, but it’s a tool in the toolbox, and one that’s worth understanding.

Last reason that I know of, some people do it for the learning value. Self-hosting probably isn’t a silver bullet for landing an IT/Systems Administrator job, but it can help you learn by doing, and the power of hands-on experience should not be underestimated. I know of several folks employed in IT that self-host many things in order to learn how to work with those bits of tech and administer them. And for those who don’t yet work in IT, there’s a lot you can learn about how computers work under the covers, web apps, what actually makes websites secure or not secure by getting your hands dirty and running some of this code yourself. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not a path for everyone, but for those who can make the trek, it can be rewarding.